Blog post 10 - Evaluation

 

Evaluation 

At the beginning I set out to to create a 10 minute piece that portrayed the story of an evacuee and their experiences with being evacuated. I wanted to try and and portray the emotions of the child and let the audience understand their struggles. Although I struggled to portray the emotions not only through facial expressions but through movement, I feel during my final performance I managed to amplify my energy levels in order to perform every movement with my maximum capability to optimise the emotions shown. 

Reflecting upon the process, I feel I would have done a few things differently if I were to take on this journey again. One of the things I would do differently is to plan out the structure of the piece as soon as possible; at the very start of the process. I feel I delayed planning this out a lot and I feel as though that negatively impacted my choreographic process. The reason for this being, I was choreographing with a sense of ambiguity at the very beginning. I was confident planning and choreographing the very first section, however, I struggled to keep an adequate pace whilst choreographing the other sections because I didn’t fully know which each section would represent. Following on from that, I feel planning out my structure would have helped me to choreograph with specific intentions about the plot of the piece. As I mentioned in previous blog posts, I struggled to accurately illustrate my character as well as what the character was going through. I believe I managed to improve this by the end of the process once I did my final performance, however, I feel if I had considered planning the structure out at the beginning, it would have significantly helped me to fulfil my goals for the piece sooner. 

I feel that, at the end of the process, I am able to say that the process was a lot harder than expected. Although I was apprehensive about it, it was still definitely a big challenge. I think one of the main things I underestimated, was the sheer volume of choreography I would have to create. Luckily, a lot of the music I used was elongated and stretched out, therefore it made sense to use slower and more gradual movements which helped fill out more time. For example, in the final section I used a "digging" motion with my arms and legs. I chose to use this to represent the character uncovering her emotions and unlocking memories (see video 1). However, in the section with the quicker pace music, I found it more difficult because I found I was using sharper and snappier movements. Fore example in the second section where I use a quick, rapid hand gesture going to the ground then coming back up again to represent the work in which the children undergo (see video 2). Evidently, these movements took up less time. 

Video 1

Video 2

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the process overall and am grateful for being able to take part in it. The prospect of being able to choose anything I wanted and making all the decisions myself contrasted with our 'normal' day of training where we, more often than not, get instructed what to do. Although sometimes the prospect of making all the decisions myself was daunting, I feel it helped me to develop confidence in myself and my abilities to take on tasks such as this the future.